Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Cause of blackout during Super Bowl unknown

In case you missed Super Bowl 47 and the awesome halftime show performance by Beyonce, social media sites were abuzz about the blackout that happened right after the performance, delaying the game for over a half hour. New Orleans Superdome officials say the cause of the blackout remains under investigation.

According to an Associated Press report, an October 15 memo released by the Louisiana Stadium & Exposition District, which oversees the Superdome, says tests on the dome's electrical feeders showed they had "some decay and a chance of failure." Entergy New Orleans is the energy company that supplies the stadium with power and the structure's engineering staff had concerns about the dome's energy connection.Officials say the exact cause of the blackout and who's to blame remained unclear on Monday but it definitely wasn't Beyonce's performance, since she had her own generator. And, it wasn't the case of too much demand for power as meters showed the 76,000-seat stadium drew no more electricity than it does during a typical New Orleans Saints game.The problem that caused the outage was believed to have happened around the spot where a line that feeds current from Entergy New Orleans connects with the Superdome's electrical system, reports said. Determining the cause will probably take days. Let's hope this doesn't hurt the city's reputation or harm future opportunities to host the Super Bowl.